Bill Murray ended his 21-year estrangement from his longtime pal and collaborator Harold Ramis shortly before he died by visiting the ailing actor/director in his native Chicago, Illinois. The Ghostbusters co-stars fell out following a dispute on the set of 1993's Groundhog Day and Ramis revealed in a 2009 interview that the old friends had "no social relationship whatsoever".
However, editors at the National Enquirer claim Murray's brother, actor and screenwriter Brian Doyle-Murray, helped the pair reconcile as Ramis' health deteriorated due to a rare blood disease.
A source says, "Bill's brother, Brian Doyle-Murray, played peacemaker. Brian had made seven films with Harold and considered himself a good friend.
"He told Bill he needed to put aside his differences and see his pal one last time before he was gone.
"Bill and Harold talked about Chicago and the Cubs (the city's baseball team) - they'd both been lifelong fans. After that, Harold was finally at peace... and so was Bill."
Ramis passed away on Monday (24Feb14), at the age of 69, and Murray saluted the late star in a statement which reads, "Harold Ramis and I together did the National Lampoon Show off Broadway, Meatballs, Stripes, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day. He earned his keep on this planet. God bless him."

The second Ghostbusters sequel is still a go, despite the death of Harold Ramis. The actor/director had been scheduled to make a cameo appearance along with the other original Ghostbusters, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, in the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and it was feared his death on Monday (24Feb14) would scupper plans.
But Sony insiders claim studio bosses still want to make the film and they're sitting down with director Ivan Reitman this week (ends28Feb14) to discuss how to proceed.
Filming is still set to start later this year (14).

U.S. President Barack Obama has saluted fellow Chicago, Illinois resident Harold Ramis, hailing the late actor/director as "one of America's greatest satirists". The Ghostbusters star died from a rare blood disorder on Monday (24Feb14) at the age of 69, and his passing prompted an outpouring of tributes from his pals and frequent collaborators Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, as well as Steve Martin, Jon Favreau, Julianne Moore and Seth MacFarlane.
Now the former Illinois Senator and his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama, have issued a statement honouring Ramis, who got his comedy start at Chicago's famous Second City group.
The statement reads: "Michelle and I were saddened to hear of the passing of Harold Ramis, one of America's greatest satirists, and like so many other comedic geniuses, a proud product of Chicago's Second City.
"When we watched his movies - from 'Animal House' and 'Caddyshack' to 'Ghostbusters' and 'Groundhog Day' - we didn't just laugh until it hurt. We questioned authority. We identified with the outsider. We rooted for the underdog. And through it all, we never lost our faith in happy endings.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with Harold's wife, Erica, his children and grandchildren, and all those who loved him, who quote his work with abandon, and who hope that he received total consciousness."

Ghostbusters' Ernie Hudson is adamant there can never be another movie installment in the franchise following the death of star/writer Harold Ramis. Fans of the 1984 movie and its 1989 sequel were plunged into mourning on Monday (24Feb14) after it was announced that Ramis had lost his battle with a rare blood disease at the age of 69.
The Ghostbusters team, which also included Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, had spent years trying get a third film off the ground, and Hudson is now convinced plans for a new movie will have to be scrapped.
He tells TMZ.com, "Harold was the glue - there wouldn't be a Ghostbusters without Harold... There can't be another Ghostbusters without Harold... My fear was always that something would happen before we all got together (again)."
Hudson also pays tribute to his late friend, who he credits with handing him his Hollywood career by hiring him for Ghostbusters.
He adds, "He was a great guy and it's a great loss. (He was a) great director, great producer, writer, actor - I mean he did it all...
"I knew I probably wouldn't be in the business had I not had the chance to work with Harold at the start of my career. He taught me a lot... He was a good friend, he'll be missed."

Bill Murray has paid tribute to his Ghostbusters co-star and frequent collaborator Harold Ramis, following his death on Monday (24Feb14). The actor, writer and filmmaker, passed away at the age of 69 from complications of a rare blood disease, and now Murray is the latest member of the beloved Ghostbusters franchise to share his condolences.
The funnyman released a statement that reads: "Harold Ramis and I together did the National Lampoon Show off Broadway, Meatballs, Stripes, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day. He earned his keep on this planet. God bless him."
Despite the fact the duo found success with a string of comedy classics in the 1980s and 1990s, Ramis revealed in a 2009 interview with website TheAVClub.com that he had not spoken to Murray since 1993's Groundhog Day over an on-set dispute, and had "no social relationship whatsoever".
Along with Murray and Ramis, actor Dan Aykroyd rounded out the trio of parapsychologists in Ghostbusters, and he expressed his sadness over the passing of his good friend on Monday as well.
A statement issued to The Hollywood Reporter reads: "(I am) deeply saddened to hear of the passing of my brilliant, gifted, funny friend, co-writer/performer and teacher Harold Ramis. May he now get the answers he was always seeking."

Columbia Pictures via Everett Collection
It didn't hit me until Sarah Holcomb's topless scene that I was probably too young to be watching Caddyshack. And the reason it didn't hit me is because it wasn't like the other grown-up movies I would routinely dismiss after catching only quick glimpses on our living room television — this one was funny. At eight years old, I found something very special in the VHS copy of Harold Ramis' directorial debut which had come into my possession that evening in the mid '90s gratis of either my Saturday Night Live-loving father, or golf-obsessed uncle. It wasn't even the first time I had seen Caddyshack — I had at least caught most of it in parts — but it was this particular nighttime viewing that would solidify my lifelong favor of the cacophony at Bushwood. It was the first time a real movie made me laugh.
I would laugh at the red-faced exasperation of Ted Knight, who I knew from Mary Tyler Moore Show reruns (I had taken more quickly to adult sitcoms than movies, either because they were more conducive to my youthful attention span or because laugh tracks gave me helpful hints as to where the comedy was). I would laugh at the zany bravado of Rodney Dangerfield, who I knew primarily via impersonations by cartoon characters. But most of all, I cherished every second we spent with Bill Murray, slurring dopily out of the side of his mouth as he harassed the country club caddies and sought the pelt of a charmingly pesky gopher. I had no idea that adults could revel in this kind of silliness — these people were acting more like cartoons than human beings. And I loved it.
Warner Bros. via Everett Collection
Obviously, I didn't get most of the jokes. I adored Chevy Chase's deadpan swagger and rhythm, but a good deal of his dialogue flew over my head. Dangerfield's benign sexual cracks were gibberish to me. And as for the plot? To its credit or detriment (you decide), the film plays more like a series of tenuously connected hijinks than a coherent narrative. So it didn't really seem to matter that Danny Noonan's quest for a college scholarship skirted my eight-year-old attention. I was far too giddy over Al Czervik's cockeyed brass and Carl Spackler's maniacal mutterings to worry that I might be missing something carrying through. Again, it wasn't until stumbling upon a sex scene that it dawned on me that this might be considered entertainment for adults. How could I have missed so much? There was too much funny to fit anything else in!
In the 18 years since, I have watched Caddyshack more times than I can say, picking up on new layers of comedy with every revisit. In middle school, I upped the ante on my appreciation for the comic value in Judge Smails' perpetually ruffled feathers. In high school, Ty Webb's playful linguistics won my nerdy heart. And in college, I returned again to my love of that big-dreaming assistant greenskeeper, trading impressions with my roommate and fellow fan of all things Bill Murray. As my two decades wading back and forth among these performances have helped me realize, the movie is a menagerie of disparate types of comedy. Deadpan, slapstick, blue, highbrow, naturalistic, wacky, farcical, surreal. And somehow, all of it lands. One movie manages to deliver a winning satirical send-up of the moneyed class, an ultra-memorable Jaws parody about human excrement, and an offbeat conversation about the benefits of breeding one's own hybrid species of Bluegrass.
It works because Caddyshack seems to operate by one rule only: the rule of funny. Abiding not by genre, audience, or even its own original conceit (Caddyshack was originally only about the caddies, with Chase and Dangerfield's characters playing very minor roles), Caddyshack is able to regard humor alone in its execution. The result is something unusual. No, unprecedented. Hell, really damn weird. You can't credit a movie that features a love triangle, a pregnancy scare, a super-intelligent rodent, and an extended non sequitur chapter about a bishop losing his faith after being struck by lightning during a stormy golf game with a reverence to the rules of a specific reality. But Ramis seemed to understand that it was the cooperation of these entities that made them all so damn hilarious.
Warner Bros. via Everett Collection
He understood that the buttoned-up justice of the peace was hilarious because of how humorless he was, especially when at odds with a human joke book running amok on his golf course for no ostensible reason other than boredom. Another movie might have used Smails as a brick wall opposite the wiles of the bawdy Czervik, but Ramis found some of Caddyshack's best comedy in his aluminum straight man. He offered cool, collected Ty as a way to smirk knowingly at the absurdity of the goings on at Bushwood, but jumped delightedly into that same absurdity with the mentally harangued Daffy Duck that was Carl Spackler. Still, as profoundly effective as this equation might be, Caddyshack exists beyond the confines of any formula or mathematical law. Once again, there is only one rule to which Ramis seemed to have devoted himself with Caddyshack. And luckily, he understood "funny" enough to be able to pull this off.
It's the reason why I can find the movie as funny at 25 as I did at eight — this full, non-discriminating commitment to laughter. The devotion to the idea that humor itself is a genre, that a single audience isn't limited to the margins of any specific style of comedy. Ramis showcased this in each of his movies, but in Caddyshack most impressively. Few movies like it were being made back in 1980, and even fewer are now. So beholden to traditional comic beats and story structure, the industry is not likely to find itself trusting an anarchical, id-friendly movie like the one Ramis delivered back at the dawn of the '80s. But the beauty of Caddyshack is its ability to refresh its sense of humor with every viewing — to deliver a new sheath of comedy that you weren't paying attention to last time, because you were too affixed on a separate string of gags altogether. We can go back to Caddyshack every year, every five years, or every decade, finding ourselves laughing the most at a different character each time. The one guarantee: each time, thanks to the brilliant sensibilities of Ramis, we will find ourselves laughing.
So we've got that going for us. Which is nice.
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With a quick and heavy stomp, LeBron James crushed our dreams and debunked rumors of a possible Space Jam sequel. For the uninitiated, Space Jam is a fondly remembered kid's film from 1996 that featured the clumsy mash-up of NBA star Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes. The film retold the story of Michael Jordan's brief retirement and transition from professional basketball to professional baseball, back to professional basketball, except with Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck in tow. The news, which feels like it was brought to life through the sheer will of about a million 20-somethings, came about when Deadline reported that Charlie and Willie Ebersol, sons of legendary broadcaster Dick Ebersol, were set to produce a sequel to the 1996 hit, with James at its center. But James denied having any knowledge of the project at all, telling the Sun Sentinel, "It's news to me. I haven't heard anything about it. Like I said, I've always loved Space Jam. It was one of my favorite movies growing up. If I have the opportunity, it will be great." And with that, the dream is over. Even though the kid in me is mourning the loss of something that never actually existed in the first place, the adult in me wonders if a Space Jam movie with LeBron James would even work in 2014.
The thing is, Space Jam was a quintessential '90s thing in so many ways. It was so much a product of that particular time and cultural zeitgeist that it couldn't possibly work in this day and age, no matter how much your heart might want it. For one thing, Looney Tunes doesn't have the same cultural foothold that it did even in the mid '90s. While the '90s kids were certainly several decades removed from Mel Blanc's heyday, the original Looney Tunes shorts still enjoyed regular reruns on Cartoon Network, so many of the children back then were well acquainted with the exploits of Bugs Bunny and the gang. Nowadays, those old school Looney Tunes reruns have been shuffled off the network in favor of modern cartoons, and sadly, many kids will never know the simple pleasures of the "Wabbit season! Duck season!" gag. And while there was a short-lived modern iteration of the characters called The Looney Tunes Show, it only aired for two seasons. Besides that, our kids' attention spans are being stretched by an almost infinite amount of distractions, and they seem downright allergic to anything animated in two dimensions in a movie theater.
And just as Looney Tunes isn't the same as it was in '96, the NBA isn't either. In the '90s, Michael Jordan's reign over professional basketball propped the sport up to unimaginable heights. Jordan wasn't simply a basketball player, but a one-man cultural phenomenon. The entire world stopped to watch Jordan and the rest of his Chicago Bulls squad run the rest of the NBA ragged. His sheer dominance lifted the entire sport into mainstream consciousness, and the same can't be said about LeBron James and today's NBA. While James is by and large the NBA's most popular current player, coming off of two championships with the Miami Heat and eyeing a third, he has never reached the same realm of cultural ubiquity as Michael Jordan. The '90s were the decade where everyone wanted to be "like Mike," and LeBron (or any other NBA player) has never enjoyed anything close to that same level of adoration. It also doesn't help that some corners of the basketball world still view LeBron James as a villain rather than the hero. For as long as James stays in the league, to some people, he will always be the man that left his Cleveland for Miami. And even as the more rational members of society have cooled off that impression since 2010, some will always hold "The Decision" against him.
So, with Looney Tunes quickly slipping out of kids' minds, and the NBA simply not enjoying the popularity it once did, it seems like the idea of a Space Jam sequel was doomed from the start. Even though LeBron James is a wonderfully gifted basketball player, and might even have better on-screen presence than Michael Jordan did, the timing is all wrong. In any case, maybe the joy of Space Jam was the novelty and sheer inexplicability of it all. The idea of the biggest athlete of the decade staring in a half animated, half-live action retelling of his return to the NBA with cartoon characters from the 1940s and Bill Murray is completely bonkers when you think about it. It was product born out of very particular mid-'90s mind frame, and ir became a cultural touchstone almost despite how profoundly silly it is. Maybe it's best that we leave Space Jam in the past.
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Ghostbusters star Harold Ramis has died at the age of 69. The actor and filmmaker passed away early on Monday (24Feb14) following a battle with rare blood disease autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Ramis started out as a playwright in college, honing his skills by penning parodies and editing Playboy magazine's jokes section in the late 1960s. He joined the Second City improvisational comedy group, where he met John Belushi and Ghostbusters co-star Bill Murray.
The trio went on to work together on the New York-based radio show The National Lampoon Radio Hour in the early 1970s and Ramis' work on the programme helped him land a job as a co-writer of the 1978 comedy film, National Lampoon's Animal House, which starred Belushi.
He and Murray became frequent collaborators, and Ramis served as writer/director on their hit movies Caddyshack and Groundhog Day. He also wrote and directed Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal's 1999 comedy Analyze This.
As an actor, Ramis was perhaps best known for his role as bespectacled ghost hunter Dr. Egon Spengler in 1984's Ghostbusters and its sequel, while he also played Russell Ziskey in another Murray collaboration, 1981's Stripes.
His other acting credits included As Good as It Gets, High Fidelity and Knocked Up, in which he was cast as Seth Rogen's dad.
Ramis also directed The Ice Harvest, Bedazzled and prehistoric comedy Year One, which was to be his final movie in 2009.
His final years were marred by private health battles - he suffered an infection in May, 2010, which caused complications related to his ongoing autoimmune disease and robbed him of his ability to walk. He recovered only to be struck down by the condition again in late 2011.
It is not clear how Ramis' death will affect the planned second Ghostbusters sequel, which has been in development for some time.

Alice Cooper has been hit by the charity supergig bug after kicking off 2014 in Hawaii onstage with Steven Tyler and Sammy Hagar - he is reteaming with the former Van Halen frontman for another fundraiser. Cooper and Hagar will perform with former Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver bandmates Slash and Matt Sorum in Las Vegas this week (beg24Feb14) as part of the Kerry Simon Says Fight MSA benefit.
Money raised at the gig will benefit sufferers of the neurological disorder known as multiple system atrophy.
The all-star charity rock gig will also feature Vince Neil and System of a Down drummer John Dolmayan, while actor Bill Murray will serve as host alongside celebrity chef Kerry Simon, who was diagnosed with MSA last year (13).
Cooper and Hagar were joined by Tyler, former Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, Weird Al Yankovic and actors Tom Arnold and Keith Carradine for New Year's Eve (31Dec13) Maui Food Bank benefit in Hawaii.

U.S. leader President Barack Obama had The Monuments Men over for dinner at the White House on Tuesday (18Feb14). George Clooney, Matt Damon and Bill Murray were in attendance for the big screening of the movie, based on the heroics of the real-life art experts who helped steal back paintings and sculptures from the Nazis at the end of World War Two.
One of the actual Monuments Men, Harry Ettlinger, and Robert Edsel, whose book inspired the movie, also attended the presidential movie night.